TRAVEL-DIARY

One's first sight of a table prepared for a Chinese meal
hardly suggests the idea of eating, at all. It looks rather as
if you were sitting down to a competition in water-colour
painting. The chopsticks, lying side by side, resemble
paint-brushes. The paints are represented by little dishes
of sauces, red, green, and brown. The tea-bowls, with their
lids, might well contain paint -water. There is even a kind
of tiny paint-rag, on which the chopsticks can be wiped.

You begin the meal by wiping hands and face with hot
moistened towels. (These towels are, perhaps, China's
most brilliant contribution to the technique of material
comfort; they should certainly be introduced into the
West.) Then comes the food. It is served in no recognizable
order of progression—fish does not necessarily follow soup,
nor meat fish. Nor can the length of the meal be foreseen by
the guest. His favourite dish may well appear at the very
end, when he is too bloated even to taste it. Horsed*ceuvre
delicacies remain in presence throughout—and this, too,
is like painting; for the diners are perpetually mixing them
in with their food, to obtain varying combinations of taste.

To-day we had shark's fin soup (one of the great soups
of the world; quite equal to minestrone or borsch), lobster,
chicken, rice, and fish. The drink, which was served in
small metal teapots, resembled Korn or Bols. It was made
from rose-petals and maize. The Governor had consider-
ately provided us with knives and forks, bat these we de-
clined to use. We had eaten already with chopsticks in
Hongkong, and were anxious for more practice. In China,
it is no social crime to drop your food on the table. When
a new dish comes in, the host makes a gesture towards it
with his chopsticks, like a cavalry-commander pointing
with his sabre to an enemy position, and the attack begins.
This scramble, so informal yet so scrupulously poMte, is

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